When
I hold my thumb on the space bar, all the keys under my left hand
change to those that would normally fall under the same fingers on
my right hand. F becomes J, R becomes U, and so on. Learning this
mirror-image typing is no harder than learning to drive on the left
when visiting Great Britain, except that you have to switch between
U.S. and British driving several times a second. Sometimes you forhet.
Another
quirk is that the apostrophe and the quotation mark, normally on the
far right, would interfere with the caps-lock key if transposed to
the left; typing a direct quote requires the right hand to jump into
the breach.
Although
inventor Edgar Matias, whose Ontario-based Matias Corp. produces the
software, says he originally meant to allow people to type while manipulating
a computer mouse, most of his customers so far are people who have
lost the use of one hand.
But
an even larger potential market beckons: wearable computers. With
half a full-sized keyboard strapped to one wrist and a display screen
strapped to the other, says Matias, a person could take inventory
or do on-site inspections while keeping both hands largely free. He
has already built a prototype by connecting a custom keyboard to a
Hewlett-Packard palmtop computer. Although the setup looks a little
ridiculous, he says, typing is much easier than on the tiny keys of
a handheld computer. How long before Matias is producing these machines
for general consumption? I would quote him on the subject, but then
I would have to put down my Miller.
DAVID
BRITTAN
©1994 Technology
Review
August/September 1994, p. 80.
Edited at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
